This paper explains in detail the 8 key elements of e-commerce and how they have changed the business. Definitions of the World Wide Web and the internet and the strategies to design a website have also been mentioned.
Value Proposition
This aspect of the business model deals with the products of the company and customer management. E-commerce enhances value proposition in such a way that it personalizes, customizes, and makes it convenient for the customers to purchase or gain knowledge about a particular product. It gives a clear differentiation between online and offline proposition among the competitors. E-commerce has enabled the customers to become more aware of a company’s products and through this, they can purchase a product and get it delivered to their doorstep. Good e-commerce strategies include views from different customers and this makes the customer even more confident about their choice.
Revenue Model
The revenue model explains how a company would devise plans to earn money from its business. E-commerce adds to its efficiencies by introducing certain strategies such as advertising, subscription, fee transaction, sales as well as affiliation. No matter how good a product might be, it cannot be popularized and its worth won’t be recognized unless it goes through proper advertisement channels. E-commerce makes it easier to advertise a product or service and customers can also subscribe to a particular website to receive updates. Fees can be transacted through this medium, it deals with an individual’s account directly and hence it can be delivered.
Market Opportunity
When a company while serving its target market, achieves its goals by competing with its rivals and serves the market space up to the mark then it is known as a market opportunity. E-commerce can cover the population of the whole world and it can provide companies with the recent changes that occur in the purchasing trends of people. It provides the corporate world with the statistics therefore it gets easier for an organization to recognize and determine its target market. And once this has been done, the market space can be provided with the desired choices raising the company’s revenue in return.
Competitive Advantage
Competitive advantage comprises of the factors that make an organization differentiate a particular from the competition thus enabling it to provide the best product at a comparatively lower price. E-commerce balances the power that the retailers can have on the customers by radically switching the prices from high to low or vice versa. E-commerce enables individuals to search online for the products simultaneously comparing the prices and opting for substitutes. E-commerce enables them to purchase the right product at a reasonable cost. It also keeps a check on the retailers so that they cannot increase the prices radically. It increases the competition among the existing customers, reduces the cost of switching off, therefore, transfers the bargaining power to the customers.
Market Strategy
Market strategy is the plan devised by the company that determines how a company would enter the market and catch the attention of the customers. E-commerce enables companies in recognizing the current trends of the market and gives a detailed view of the happenings and current changes that take place within the market. It enables new companies to recognize their rivals by providing information about their products and highlights the strategies. This way a new company can devise plans about how to enter into the market, identify its needs, and recognize the customers. Through e-commerce, it becomes the strategies that can be looked upon and a company can decide as to how it should make its strategies, what to avoid and what to capture.
Organizational Development
Organizational development is the procedure through which the functions within a business can be identified and the skills can be determined which are required to perform each job. It also encompasses the procedure of recruiting and hiring employees. Whenever a company needs to acquire new people, it puts up advertisements in newspapers, educational institutes, etc. After the inception of e-commerce, it has become easier to put up the company’s demands and requirements on a larger scale i.e. internet. The candidates can search for jobs online and also compare among the different jobs and the requirements and decide which category they lie in.
Management Team
A management team is a group of people who are maintained within an organization for its growth and extension. It is very important to retain the employees in an organization because as long as this element is absent, a company cannot progress. A manager needs to maintain harmony and peace among its employees so that they are satisfied with their jobs and in return give their best performances. E-commerce assists an organization to do so by providing strategies to bring about efficient changes in the company to keep up the spirits of the employees and boost them in the right direction. (Rayport, 2003)
Software and Hardware Considerations to Develop a Website
The software considerations that need to be kept in mind while developing a website are that the language of the server is side programmed. A database system is required to save the information so that it can be provided to the script when needed.
The hardware considerations that are required are an IP connection to the internet that is public. The machine should be connected to the internet and should be online all the time so ha the site can be accessed 24/7. The machine’s performance should be proportional to the intricacy of the site and the number of users it can support. For instance, a presentation of a site can be hosted on a p4 computer with 1000MB RAM. This would be able to support a thousand visitors daily. (Randall, 2007)
Internet and the World Wide Web
World Wide Web
World Wide Web is most commonly denoted by the acronym www. It is a system of hypertext documents that are interlinked and can be accessed through the internet facility. Through this web browser, an individual can view pages containing text, images, videos, animation, etc.
Internet
Internet is a system that connects computer networks globally. The computer networks must be using the Internet Protocol Suite. It carries a large array of sources that contain information, entertainment, etc, and also contains the road and rail network that can support e-mails. (Preston, 1998)
References
Preston. (1998) How the Internet Works. Que Publishing.
Randall. W. Jensen. (2007). Software Engineering. Prentice Hall.
Rayport. (2003). Introduction to E-Commerce. Tata Mc Graw Hill.